Suddenly alone:
Part Two — A Story Yet to Be Told
Something was moving beneath his bed.
Again.
Steven slowly opened his eyes, staring at the roof of his little shelter.
He listened carefully.
A scratching sound came from somewhere near his feet, followed by the unmistakable noise of something crawling through the dry leaves he had gathered to make his sleeping place a little more comfortable.
“Oh, come on! Not again!”
He sat upright, grabbed a nearby branch and gently pushed away a small crab that had apparently decided to pay him another visit.
“Seriously? There’s an entire beach out there, and you have to come and sleep here?”
The crab disappeared beneath a piece of driftwood.
Steven sighed.
It had been twenty-three days since he had washed ashore on the island.
Twenty-three days since the Dame Maria had disappeared beneath the waves.
And twenty-three days since he had last seen another human being.
He had stopped calling out for his fellow crew members after the first week. Not because he had forgotten about them, but because he had finally accepted that nobody was going to answer.
At least, not here.
Life on the island had slowly become something resembling a routine.
Every morning, he walked towards a small freshwater stream he had discovered during his first exploration. Afterwards, he would head towards the rocks along the eastern side of the island, where he had learned to catch fish using a sharpened wooden spear.
It had taken him several days to catch his first one.
And even longer to figure out how to prepare it properly.
His first attempt had been a disaster.
Burned on the outside, practically raw on the inside.
“Compliments to the chef,” he had muttered sarcastically.
But things had improved.
He had learned to maintain a fire, carefully preserving glowing embers beneath ashes overnight. He had also learned how to make fire from scratch using dry wood, although it still required considerable patience.
His shelter had been reinforced with branches, leaves and pieces of wreckage from the ship.
It wasn’t exactly comfortable.
But it was home.
Or at least, the closest thing he had to one.
Unfortunately, some of the island’s smaller inhabitants seemed to think so too.
Steven crawled outside and stretched his aching back.
The morning sun was already rising above the ocean.
He looked towards the trees bordering the beach.
One particularly large tree caught his attention.
Its trunk was thick, and several sturdy branches extended outwards a few metres above the ground.
Steven tilted his head.
“Hmm…”
He looked back at his shelter.
Then at the tree.
Then at the shelter again.
“Well, perhaps it’s time for an upgrade.”
Building a new shelter turned out to be considerably more difficult than Steven had imagined.
For starters, he had no ladder.
And although he had a hammer, a knife and several pieces of rope, constructing something several metres above the ground was an entirely different challenge.
He began by collecting the strongest pieces of driftwood he could find.
Some were too short.
Others were too rotten.
And one particularly promising branch snapped in half the moment he tried putting his weight on it.
“Wonderful.”
He threw the broken branch aside.
“Absolutely wonderful.”
By the end of the first day, he had managed to secure only a few wooden supports against the trunk.
His hands were sore, his shoulders ached, and he had discovered several new scratches along his arms.
But he wasn’t going to give up.
Over the following days, he gradually constructed a raised wooden platform, supported by the tree’s thick lower branches and additional poles secured against the trunk.
He used rope and strips of fabric to fasten the pieces together, testing each section carefully before putting his full weight on it.
The final result wasn’t particularly impressive.
It leaned slightly to one side.
The roof was made from overlapping branches and large leaves.
And climbing up required using a rather questionable wooden ladder he had assembled himself.
But it stood.
And, more importantly, it kept him away from the little creatures that had been disturbing his sleep.
Steven stood beneath the structure, looking up at his creation.
“Not bad.”
He crossed his arms.
“Not bad at all.”
For the first time in weeks, he felt something other than relief at having survived another day.
He felt proud.
He had built something.
Something that hadn’t existed before.
And somehow, that simple thought made him smile.
That evening, Steven climbed into his new shelter with the leather folder he had found in the wooden crate.
He had been using the paper almost every day.
At first, his notes had been little more than a record of his attempts to survive.
Day four. Found a small stream further inland.
Day seven. Finally managed to catch a fish.
Day eleven. Heavy rain last night. Shelter needs improvement.
But as the days passed, his entries had gradually become longer.
He started describing the weather.
The changing colours of the ocean.
The strange shapes of the clouds drifting above the island.
Sometimes he wrote about the people he missed.
Sometimes about the Dame Maria.
And occasionally, about the little cricket he had heard on his very first evening.
The creature had become something of a familiar companion.
Almost every night, its distinctive chirping could be heard somewhere among the nearby vegetation.
Steven had even started talking to it.
“Good evening, little fellow,” he would sometimes say.
And whenever the cricket responded with another chirp, Steven couldn’t help but smile.
Of course, he knew the creature wasn’t actually answering him.
But after several weeks without another human voice, even the smallest sound could feel like company.
Tonight was no different.
Steven settled himself against the tree trunk, resting the folder on his knees.
The ocean stretched endlessly before him.
The sky was slowly turning orange.
And somewhere below, his little friend began its evening performance.
Chirp.
Steven smiled.
“Right on time.”
He opened the folder.
There were fewer blank sheets remaining than he would have liked.
He had begun writing on both sides, keeping his handwriting small to preserve as much paper as possible.
He picked up one of the pencils.
For a moment, he stared at the empty space beneath his latest entry.
Then he began to write.
Day twenty-seven.
He stopped.
Twenty-seven days.
Almost an entire month.
He looked towards the ocean.
How many more days would he spend here?
Another twenty-seven?
A hundred?
A year?
The thought made him uncomfortable.
He lowered his eyes towards the paper again.
But instead of writing about his new shelter, or the fish he had caught earlier that morning, he found himself thinking about something else.
The storm.
The ship.
The moment everything had changed.
He turned to a fresh sheet.
And began writing.
Once upon a time, there was a man who found himself completely alone in a world he didn’t know.
Steven paused.
He read the sentence again.
Then he smiled faintly.
“Well, that sounds familiar.”
He continued.
He had lost everything he knew. His home, his friends, and the world he had once taken for granted.
But somewhere between the rising sun and the endless ocean, he began to discover something he had never truly noticed before.
The beauty of silence.
Steven stopped writing.
He stared at the words.
This wasn’t a diary entry.
Not really.
He wasn’t recording how many fish he had caught or what he had built that day.
He was telling a story.
And strangely enough, he wanted to know what happened next.
He turned the pencil between his fingers.
“Well, would you look at that…”
A quiet laugh escaped his lips.
“I think I’ve just written the beginning of a story.”
Chirp.
Steven looked towards the trees.
“Yes, I know. About time, isn’t it?”
He laughed again.
And for the next hour, he continued writing.
The days that followed were different.
Not because anything extraordinary happened on the island.
The sun still rose every morning.
The waves continued washing onto the beach.
Steven still had to collect water, catch fish, gather firewood and maintain his shelter.
But now, whenever he finished his daily tasks, he had something to look forward to.
His writing.
Sometimes he wrote about the island.
Sometimes he remembered moments from his life before the storm.
And sometimes he invented people and places that had never existed.
He discovered that a single thought could become an entire paragraph.
A memory could become a scene.
And an ordinary sound could inspire something completely unexpected.
His little cricket, for example, had already appeared in several of his stories.
Not always as a cricket.
Sometimes as a mysterious voice in the darkness.
Sometimes as a loyal companion.
And once, rather amusingly, as a wise old man who seemed to know everything about the world.
Steven had laughed at that one.
“Imagine that. A cricket giving life advice.”
But the more he wrote, the more he began to understand something.
For weeks, he had been surrounded by silence.
Yet his mind had never been completely quiet.
There had always been thoughts.
Memories.
Questions.
Ideas.
He simply hadn’t taken the time to listen to them before.
And now, with nobody around to interrupt him, those thoughts had finally found their way onto paper.
One evening, Steven sat in his shelter, finishing another page.
The sun was beginning to disappear behind the horizon.
A gentle breeze moved through the leaves above him.
He put down his pencil and stretched his fingers.
“Another masterpiece,” he joked.
He glanced at the growing collection of handwritten pages beside him.
There were stories about places he remembered.
Stories about people he missed.
And stories about people who existed only in his imagination.
He had never considered himself a writer.
Not once.
And yet, here he was.
Alone on a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, filling page after page with words.
Steven leaned back against the tree.
For a while, he simply watched the ocean.
Then something caught his attention.
Far away, near the horizon, a small dark shape was moving across the water.
He sat upright.
“What…?”
He narrowed his eyes.
The shape moved slowly against the fading sunlight.
It was too far away to distinguish any details.
But there was no mistaking it.
A ship.
Steven jumped to his feet, almost forgetting that he was sitting several metres above the ground.
“A ship!”
He hurried down the ladder and ran towards the beach.
“HEY!”
He waved both arms above his head.
“OVER HERE!”
The ship continued moving.
Steven looked towards the remains of his campfire.
Perhaps he could make enough smoke.
Perhaps somebody aboard would notice.
He rushed towards the fire, gathering dry branches and leaves.
But by the time he had managed to produce a thick column of smoke, the ship was already little more than a dark speck against the horizon.
He stood on the beach, watching it disappear.
“Come on…”
Nothing.
No change of direction.
No sign that anyone had noticed him.
Eventually, the ship vanished into the distance.
Steven slowly lowered his arms.
For several minutes, he remained standing there.
He had almost forgotten what it felt like to see something from the outside world.
Something made by human hands.
Something carrying other people.
People who were probably going about their ordinary lives, completely unaware that a man was standing on a distant island, desperately trying to attract their attention.
Steven looked towards the horizon one last time.
Then he smiled faintly.
“Well…”
He took a deep breath.
“At least now I know ships pass through here.”
He turned towards his shelter.
“Perhaps one day I’ll find a way to get their attention.”
Later that evening, Steven climbed back into his shelter.
The sky had grown dark.
Stars appeared above the ocean, brighter than he could ever remember seeing them before.
He sat down beside his collection of handwritten pages.
For a moment, he looked at them.
Only a few weeks earlier, those sheets had been nothing more than a strange collection of supplies inside a battered wooden crate.
He had almost dismissed them as useless.
Now, they had become some of his most valuable possessions.
He picked up his pencil.
And beneath the final paragraph of his latest story, he wrote:
Perhaps one day, I’ll find a way to attract the attention of a passing ship.
He paused.
Somewhere below, the familiar sound of his little companion broke through the evening silence.
Chirp.
Steven smiled.
Then he continued writing.
But until that day comes, I suppose I still have a story to tell.
He placed the pencil beside the paper.
Looked towards the ocean.
And listened to the gentle sound of the waves.
For the first time since arriving on the island, Steven wasn’t thinking about how many days he had been stranded.
He was thinking about what he might write tomorrow.
— The End —